Carvio Help
The same manual that is built into Carvio (F1 in the app), chapter by chapter. Every option in the program has a topic here; search for its name or browse the contents.
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Getting Started
Carvio is a design and CAM program for CNC routers and lasers. You draw or import a design, turn it into toolpaths, check them in a 3D preview, and then save G-code or send the job…
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The Carvio Window
This chapter is a tour of the Carvio window: the menus and toolbar, the side panels with their tabs, the 2D and 3D views and the status bar. It also explains how to move around the…
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Job Setup and Files
Every Carvio project starts with a job: the block of material you will cut, where its origin is and where Z zero is. This chapter explains the Job Setup dialog, material sheets, an…
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Drawing Vectors
Vectors are the lines and shapes of your design: the outlines that toolpaths follow and that 3D shapes are built from. This chapter describes every tool in the Create Vectors secti…
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Editing Vectors
Once you have some vectors, you can move, size, turn, copy, combine and reshape them. This chapter covers the mouse handles, node editing, the Transform Vectors and Edit Objects se…
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Importing and Exporting
You do not have to draw everything in Carvio. You can bring in drawings from other programs, images to trace or carve, 3D models, clips from the clipart library and the drawing of…
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3D Modeling
The Modeling tab builds a 3D relief: a surface that the 3D Roughing and 3D Finishing toolpaths carve into the material. You make the relief out of components: shapes raised from ve…
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Tools and Materials
Every toolpath is cut with a tool from the Tool Database. The database describes each cutter's shape, so Carvio can work out where its edge goes, and holds its cutting values (pass…
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Toolpaths
A toolpath is the route the tool takes through the material: where it plunges, how deep it goes, which way it travels and how fast. You make toolpaths from your vectors (and from t…
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2D Toolpaths
The 2D toolpaths machine your vectors at set depths: Profile cuts along them, Pocket clears the area inside them, Drilling makes holes at them, V-Carve carves them with a V-bit and…
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Special Toolpaths
Besides profiles, pockets, drilling and V-carving, Carvio has six toolpaths for particular jobs: Fluting for grooves that taper in and out, Edge Form for running a shaped cutter al…
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3D Toolpaths
The 3D toolpaths carve the relief you build on the Modeling tab into the material. 3D Roughing removes most of the waste quickly with a sturdy tool, leaving a thin skin over the mo…
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Lasers
Carvio can drive a laser as well as a spindle: a diode or CO2 laser machine, or a laser module fitted to a CNC router. Three toolpaths are made for it: Laser Cut follows vectors to…
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Previewing Toolpaths
The preview cuts your toolpaths into a virtual block of material in the 3D view, so you can see the finished part before you go near the machine. It catches most mistakes cheaply:…
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Saving G-code
When the toolpaths look right in the preview, you write them out as G-code: the text file of moves your machine's controller runs. Carvio does this with a post processor, a small d…
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Machine Control
Carvio can drive your CNC machine directly: connect to a grbl or grblHAL controller, jog, home, set the work zero with a touch plate, then run the job while the Machine view shows…
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Setup Sheets and Project Notes
Carvio can put the job on paper for whoever runs the machine: a setup sheet with the material, the datum and every toolpath, a tool sheet with every tool and its settings, and your…
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Preferences
Edit > Preferences... holds the settings that belong to you rather than to a project: the look of Carvio, the units, autosave, the preview, the demo machines and your company detai…
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Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts
These are all the keys and mouse actions Carvio understands. On a Mac, Cmd works where a table says Ctrl in text fields and the Project Notes editor. The single-letter and arrow ke…
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Licence and the free trial
Carvio is a one-time purchase: one licence covers every release of the major version it names (every 1.x release, say) on up to the machines it names. Until a licence is entered, C…